Fuel Rock Club threatened by noise complaint.

A complaint about noise has been made by a resident of Womanby Street, Cardiff to the local council about noise from our beloved Fuel Rock Club.

With the local music scene constantly under threat from development and noise issues for residents, Fuel and The Music Venue Trust went to see the Council about the complaint yesterday.

In a post on the Music Venue Trust’s website they say:

After several years of discussion around Agent of Change, this issue is still a real threat to venues across the country. The balance between residents’ needs and venues’ needs is a difficult one. Music Venue Trust believes that a great balance between those needs can be struck by adopting the Agent of Change principle; that the person wanting to make a change to an area or building is responsible for managing the impact of that change.

The current example on Womanby Street, Cardiff directly affects 3 MVA members and is typical of an Agent of Change issue; not only has a new resident marched into Fuel Rock Club and demanded that they turn the volume down, then subsequently made a formal complaint to Cardiff City Council, but the planned redevelopment of the Wetherspoons Pub to include hotel rooms is real cause for concern. Despite Womanby Street being (informally but widely) recognized as a music/nightlife quarter, planning permission has been granted for hotel rooms which back onto the very part of the street where Clwb Ifor Bach, The Moon Club and Fuel Rock Club are clustered.

Although we are not convinced by the efficacy of petitions, Mark, Beverley and Frank Turner have all signed the petition which calls on the Welsh Assembly to support Cardiff’s music scene.

While this focuses on Fuel, it’s a threat to the street as a whole in that the proposed planning changes can see potentially the closure of established and properly licenced venues on the street closing their doors. This cannot be a good thing for the thousands of visitors to the street and it’s bars and clubs.

I’m not sure what can be done to protect the clubs other than giving full support to the venues when the time comes and the time is now.

Live music is so important and so are the venues that promote it. Please take a minute to email your local City councillor (if you know who they are) and ask them to investigate. Write to your MP (if you know who they are) and protest that people who move into the area do so on the understanding that there are clubs and bars that are likely to cause a noise issue and that they were there first.

This is a real SOS for Cardiff as this vibrant Street needs to stay a cultural hub for all of Wales.